E-Mail This Article to a Friend WEST MEMPHIS FREE Global event for convicted metalheads BY MIKE MILIARD

Anyone who’s seen Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s brutal, haunting documentaries Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations has likely never forgotten them. This Saturday, events here and across the country aim to make sure the films’ subjects are remembered too.

When three young boys were viciously slain in the poor backwater of West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1993, three suspects were arrested almost immediately. There was no murder weapon, and no physical evidence linking Jesse Misskelley, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols to the murders. But there was an inconsistent, illegally obtained, and soon retracted "confession" from Misskelley (who’s borderline mentally retarded). There was also the fact that Echols dressed in black, listened to Metallica, read Stephen King, and flirted with Wicca. Rumors of Satanic sacrifice swept through the largely Baptist community, and after a shoddy trial riddled with errors, all three were convicted. Echols was sentenced to death, Baldwin got life without parole, and Misskelley received life plus 40 years. In the decade-plus since, the case has been a rallying point for those who believe the teens are innocent — or at least deserve a fair trial.

West Memphis Three Worldwide Awareness Day has about 50 different events planned for this weekend across the country and abroad — including one in Moscow and one on a base in Antarctica.

Locally, Somerville poet Bree Rolfe has organized a rock show — featuring the Chain Letter, Hot Black, the Shills, and the Living Sea — at O’Brien’s on July 23. With Mitt Romney pushing hard once again to bring the death penalty to Massachusetts (see The sudden death of Romney's dream), it’s a timely event.

"I am 99 percent sure they’re innocent," says Rolfe. "But even if they aren’t, they deserve a fair trial, which they didn’t get."

"They’re coming into a really crucial time in the court system," says Tammy Adin, an associate editor of the online ’zine Punk Globe and the event’s national organizer. "They’re about to head to federal court where they’ll hopefully get more of a fair shake at it than they did in Arkansas."

Adin intends to funnel proceeds from the events to the WM3 Legal Defense Fund. But she says awareness is just as important.

She’s talked to many people who’ve heard of the case, but who for some reason believed the three had been freed a long time ago. "Then there’s another whole generation of young people who have never heard of it, and then as soon as they hear of it, are just amazed."

Perhaps, she says, because they can see parallels to their own lives. "I’m the parent of a 16-year-old girl who’s a punk in a small town, and she gets harassed," Adin says. "She wears black and listens to punk music. I was the same way. So many people who don’t fit in where they’re living can see that this could happen to them."

For more information on the West Memphis Three, visit the Portland Phoenix at PortlandPhoenix.com this week for a feature story on the case, or contact the fund directly at www.wm3.org. O’Brien’s is at 3 Harvard Avenue, in Allston. Cover is $8; call 617.782.6245.